Social Creature

by Tara Isabella Burton

  Louise buries herself in all of them.

  * * *

  —

  Louise lays one dress out on the bed.

  It still smells just like her.

  She puts on Lavinia’s earrings. She puts on Lavinia’s shoes.

  It frightens her, she thinks, looking at herself in the mirror, how much she looks like Lavinia. She has to touch her face, just to be sure.

  She puts on Lavinia’s foundation, and it is so strange to be the one putting it on herself, and not to have Lavinia’s fingers against her skin, and not to have Lavinia wipe the pouf against her cheekbones, or over her lips, or on her chin.

  She puts on the blush, and the mascara, and the eyeliner, and all these things she is so unused to doing on her own.

  She puts on Lavinia’s wine-dark lipstick. She puckers up. She blows a kiss to the mirror, like Lavinia is on the other side of the glass, like this is the only way to get to her.

  Louise’s fingers are shaking, but she gets the lipstick perfectly inside the lines, anyway.

  * * *

  —

  Lavinia is reading Thoreau.

  She is quoting Whitman.

  She is sitting by a fireplace, somewhere.

  * * *

  —

  Henry Upchurch lives in the Dakota. He is in Amagansett, now, and even though Hal has his own place in Tribeca, with this friend of his from Deerfield who works at Goldman, when Hal entertains it’s always at the Dakota.

  Louise has never been in a home this nice before.

  The windows look straight onto the park. The ceilings are so high Louise has to crane her neck to see the chandeliers. There are crown moldings and hardwood floors and a room that is so indulgently full of nothing but books, and there is space—so much space to move around in, and Louise has not realized before what a luxury space is.

  Hal has put American flags everywhere.

  He has draped them on the sofas. He has hung them off the portrait frames. He has put tacky paper bunting in every doorframe. They cover every surface in the house except the three portraits along the fireplace wall.

  “Jeremiah Upchurch. Henry Upchurch—the third, as it happens. Prince Hal.”

  Hal in the hall is wearing a bow tie. He is almost handsome.

  Hal in the living room is wearing an Uncle Sam hat on top of his pink shirt, his bright-blue trousers. His bow tie has little red elephants on it, which clash violently with everything else he’s wearing, his blazer with pink elbow patches. He’s holding an unlit sparkler and a red-white-and-blue kazoo.

  “Look at you.” Hal considers her. “You almost look like you fit in.”

  Louise smiles.

  “So, Rex finally gave in.” Hal gulps from a red Solo cup. “What? It’s an American tradition!”

  He hands her a cup, takes a flask from his blazer pocket. “The swill’s on the sideboard,” he says. “Henry Upchurch’s liquor cabinet is open to a very select few.”

  “I feel special, then.”

  She toasts.

  “Good,” he says. “You should.”

  “Happy birthday, Hal.”

  He grins. There is a gap in his two front teeth. “A quarter century,” he says, “and I have accomplished exactly nothing with it. Just as God intended. The blood in the race starts to thin.” He raises his glass to the portraits. “Or so they say. Can you see the resemblance?”

  “I can’t say I do,” says Louise.

  His mouth twists. He smiles. He pours more whiskey into her cup.

  The sound system is playing “Dixie” on repeat.

  “How about now? Wait—let’s ask your boyfriend!”

  Rex is in a summer suit.

  “Young Louise here questions my paternity! What is it?”

  Rex is looking at her so strangely and Louise wonders if this is something Lavinia has worn with him.

  “Nothing,” Rex says. “You look beautiful, that’s all.”

  He takes her hand. He kisses her on the forehead in front of everybody, like he’s proud to be here with her, like he wants everybody to know.

  Beowulf Marmont is here; so is Gavin Mullaney; so are so many people Louise hasn’t met but whom she has seen, if not at the secret bookstore then at the opera, or the MacIntyre, or the P.M., or so many other places that Lavinia’s people—dispersed though they are—seem to go.

  “Always a very great pleasure, Louise,” says Beowulf. He kisses her on the cheek. A girl with fragile eyes sits very quietly on the couch with her hands folded, watching them. “I didn’t realize you knew Hal!” He says it like she’s been holding out on him.

  Louise just smiles.

  “How’s your work for The Fiddler going? I did enjoy those online pieces you did, earlier this year.”

  “Thank you. I enjoyed writing them.”

  “You’re not bad, you know. I mean—compared to all the tripe that’s out there.”

  Gavin comes to greet her, too.

  “You owe me a pitch, motherfucker,” he says. He gives her a high five.

  Everybody acts like she belongs.

  * * *

  —

  Hal smokes a cigarette out the window. “Here’s the thing I love about house parties,” Hal says. “I hate new people. Henry Upchurch always used to say that meeting anybody new after the age of twenty-five is a waste of time.” He says it winking, in case anybody thinks he means it. “I guess I’m all out of time. There’s only ten people in New York—and I know you all. Everyone else is a garbage fire.”

  “Only five more years to make Five Under Thirty,” Beowulf calls out.

  “Please,” Hal says. “I’m just a humble insurance executive.”

  Everybody laughs (and laughs. And laughs).

  * * *

  —

  “I’ve never been inside the Dakota before,” whispers an anorexically thin girl with very clearly defined brows to the girl with the fragile eyes.

  * * *

  —

  Louise fakes it.

  She chats with Beowulf Marmont about the opera, about all the productions that Louise has definitely, definitely, not fallen asleep through (that she definitely, definitely, has not spent getting fingered by Lavinia in a private box); about the time the donkey they use for The Barber of Seville, who is called Sir Gabriel, took a shit onstage, and this other time that Diana Damrau coughed.

  She chats with Gavin Mullaney and the anorexic girl (who is called India) about people they know from Collegiate and St. Bernard’s and Chapin and Exeter and Devonshire, of course Devonshire, which Louise knows so very well (she tells the story of the two kids who ran away like she knew them, and Gavin backs her up on what a good piece it was for The Fiddler), and then Louise tells a story that Lavinia told her once about this girl at Chapin who masturbated with a lacrosse stick and sent the video to her boyfriend, and how it went viral and she had to withdraw, and everybody laughs because they haven’t thought about that story in years, and they’re so glad to have a chance to tell it again.

  “Aren’t you lucky?” Hal’s voice is low in her ear. “I told you—so much better to be a nonentity. You could have fucked the entire football team at Devonshire, and nobody would have any idea.”

  “I wish,” says Louise, and everybody laughs, even though, come to think of it, it’s probably true.

  Louise tells a story about the time the whole campus was snowed in and she (and Virgil Bryce, but she doesn’t mention that part) got cross-country skis and made a couple hundred dollars selling hot coffee (and Virgil’s weed, but she doesn’t mention that part either) dorm door to dorm door.

  Everyone laughs.

  “She’s amazing,” Rex says. “She even got away with pretending to be a boarding-school student, once. For a whole year! Before somebody finally figured it out.”

/>   Louise rounds on him.

  For a second, a horrible sickening second, she thinks he is making fun of her.

  But Rex is smiling at her with such affection, and such pride, even the story as he tells it is total bullshit (it was only a couple of weeks, and only in the dining hall, and the only person to ever figure it out was her mother, because she was too afraid to talk to anybody, and her mother had been so ashamed), but everybody is laughing and acting like this is the funniest thing in the world, and even Hal is grinning between his gap teeth, so what can Louise do but cough and swallow her fear and tell the story, the most wonderful story, about the fantastic prank she pulled, and how she even attended Greek classes for a year, and how she even handed in a paper, once, and everybody thinks this is the funniest thing in the world, and also that she is very brave.

  Rex puts his arm around her, and kisses her on the cheek, and nobody seems to acknowledge that this means that she hadn’t gone to the academy, after all.

  * * *

  —

  Louise goes to the bathroom.

  She reapplies her lipstick. She puts on more powder.

  She checks Lavinia’s phone.

  Eleven Facebook messages. Most from Mimi. Thirteen Likes.

  A text from Cordelia: where have you been?

  Sorry darling! Been having an existential crisis. Things mad. Will write soon!

  Lavinia posts a photo of an American flag, flying from a very beautiful colonial house one could very easily think was a charming country inn, where a girl whose best friend fucked her ex might go to get away, for a little while.

  She writes: All the past we leave behind;

  We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,

  Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Within a minute, Beowulf Marmont Likes it.

  * * *

  —

  Everyone inside is drunk on sideboard wine, except for Hal, who has been refilling his flask all evening.

  “Christ,” Hal says. “How cliché.”

  “What is it?” India was telling everybody how much better barre is for your ass than spinning.

  “Fresh and strong the world we seize!” Hal rolls his eyes. “World of labor and the march. Wow. Such labor.” He snorts. “Try coal mining.” He flashes the phone to everybody, so everybody can see.

  “Don’t,” says Rex. He says it very quietly.

  “Pioneers—o, pioneers, did you dodge a bullet or what?”

  Rex doesn’t say anything. He has gone very pale. He chews on his lower lip.

  “How’d she take it?” Hal’s looking right at Louise now. “When you told her. Was there a catfight? Did you get naked?”

  “She’s out of town right now,” Louise says. “She’s taking a break.”

  Hal laughs. “Exile. How precious. Diddums. I’d watch your back, young Louise—she might stick a knife in your ribs while you sleep.”

  Louise laughs like she can still see straight.

  “I mean—you might get lucky. Maybe she’ll swallow a fistful of Mommy Williams’s Xanax again!” He blows into his kazoo. “Lock up all the razor blades. Don’t let her near water.”

  Louise’s gorge rises, and she thinks she is going to be sick—she will be sick; she thinks she’s going to get hysterical—she will, she will—except Rex is the one to jump to his feet.

  Rex is the one to bolt.

  * * *

  —

  That, at least, gives Louise an excuse to go after him.

  * * *

  —

  She finds him in one of the bedrooms—a single Spartan bed in the middle of an enormous floor, a frayed rocking horse, boarding-school flags from Devonshire and Andover and Deerfield on a corkboard on the wall.

  He’s smoking a joint out the window.

  “You know.” Rex stares so blankly out the window. “I think we really are bad people.”

  “No—no!”

  “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m the worst—I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “It’s fine! You’re fine!”

  “If something happens to her,” he says, “if she—Christ—whatever happens to her, it’s my fault.”

  “It’s not,” Louise tries. “I promise you—”

  “You don’t understand!” It is the first time Rex has ever raised his voice to her. “You don’t get it—how long have you known her, what? Half a year?” He exhales so slowly. “She’s not your problem—she’s mine! You can’t just—make that go away because you want to.” He puts out the joint on Hal’s desk. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry—this isn’t fair to you. None of it is.”

  “She’ll be fine!” Louise puts her hands on his shoulders. She buries her lips in the back of his neck. She takes a deep breath. “I promise—I promise. She’ll be fine.” She forces herself to smile. She forces her heart to stop beating the way it beats. “Things will go back to normal,” she says.

  He clings to her hand so tightly. He presses it to his shoulder. He looks up at her so gratefully, like she’s made this true, just by saying it.

  * * *

  —

  They go back inside. They smile. They toast.

  * * *

  —

  Beowulf Marmont’s big-eyed girlfriend breaks a champagne glass, and immediately Rex says “I’ll fix it” while Hal just stands there, and then Hal starts laughing.

  “That’s what they’re going to call your biography when you die,” Hal says. “I’ll Fix It: The Rex Eliot Story.”

  “Nobody’s going to write my biography,” says Rex, from the floor.

  “Probably not,” says Hal. “Nor mine, either. Or maybe they will. Being the life and opinions of a humble insurance executive.” He shrugs. “Oh well. When the revolution comes, nobody will be reading books, anyway.”

  He clears his throat.

  “We’ll burn them all for firewood,” he says. “Won’t we, young Louise?”

  Louise holds his gaze. “Of course,” she says, and raises a glass.

  * * *

  —

  Now they’re drinking more champagne. Now they’re turning up the music. Now they’re playing pin the tail on the donkey with a novelty set where the donkey is a Democrat and all the pins are flags. Now they’re doing lines off the coffee table, and drinking punch Hal tells everybody has molly in it although Louise isn’t sure.

  * * *

  —

  “What do you want for your birthday, Hal?” asks India.

  “A blow job.”

  Everybody laughs along with him.

  “You’re disgusting,” says India, but she’s smiling.

  “As it happens,” says Hal, “I want absolutely nothing. A true man severs all attachments.”

  “Is that what Henry Upchurch says?”

  Louise doesn’t mean to be cruel. But Hal’s mouth twitches, and he makes a strange little grimace, and then he smiles and he laughs, which gives everybody else permission to laugh, too, and he says “That’s exactly what Henry Upchurch says” and then he says “Christ, you’re a bitch,” but he says it so affectionately, and Gavin Mullaney claps her on the shoulder and India mimes the dropping of the microphone and even Rex shrugs helplessly as if to say is she wrong? and everybody is laughing and taking photographs and telling Louise that she’s won the evening and, in a sense, she has.

  * * *

  —

  Now they drink even more. Now Hal proposes a toast that begins “and let us now praise famous men.” Now they put on old-school swing-dance music because Hal thinks they should all listen to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and meditate on its significance for the American manufacturing industry, and Rex lifts Louise high into the air, and Hal catches her le
gs, and everybody thinks it’s hilarious to carry Louise aloft between the drawing room and the library and the kitchen, so she can grab a bottle of Henry Upchurch’s hidden, very nice whiskey from the kitchen and pour a whole bunch of it down her throat.

  Now Beowulf Marmont is posting a picture of Louise to Facebook.

  In it, she sits with Rex on the sofa, under portraits of all the Upchurch men. Rex is kissing her cheek.

  Everybody Likes it.

  Rex Likes it, too, even though he’s sitting right next to her, and when he does Louise looks up at him and he smiles at her and Louise smiles back.

  * * *

  —

  By dawn, everybody except Louise has fallen asleep on Henry Upchurch’s couches, even Hal, even though he took a bunch of his modafinil that night, just to stay awake.

  Louise flips through the photos on her phone.

  She doesn’t recognize herself in that dress, that lipstick, happy in the arms of a man who loves her. Borne aloft without Lavinia even there to hold her hand.

  Like she belongs.

  You cannot do this forever, she thinks.

  * * *

  —

  But when Rex is asleep, and Hal is asleep with India nuzzled up to him and facing into his chest, and Beowulf Marmont is asleep with the fragile-eyed girl’s arms slung over his waist, and everyone else is on the floor, Louise slips on her shoes. She goes downstairs, she nods at the doorman, and she walks outside into the barely breaking dawn.

  She calls Rex from Lavinia’s phone.

  It goes to voicemail, just as she knew it would.

  * * *

  —

  “Darling,” Lavinia says, in that light, affected way of hers. Her voice is shaking. “It’s—it’s been grand, hasn’t it?” She swallows. “You’re probably asleep right now—maybe—maybe she’s there. I suppose she’s there. That’s fine. I mean—” A deep, sincere breath. “I mean: I wanted you to know. I’m fine. Lulu told me everything. And—well, I suppose I raged a bit and set a fire or two but I want you to know—I’ve decided. I—I’ve got no interest in doing that, now. So—well. I want you to be happy. I’ve decided that. You and Lulu—both of you. I love you—don’t think I don’t. I love you both. And I want the best for both of you. Only—you’ll understand, won’t you? If I prefer not to see you for some time. Anyway. Anyway. Goodbye. I love you. Goodbye.”